Calvert Early Deer Harvest Rises 30.1%, DNR Reports

PRINCE FREDERICK — Calvert County hunters checked in 489 deer during the first seven weeks of Maryland’s 2026 season, a 30.1% jump from the same stretch last year and one of the sharpest increases anywhere in the state, according to harvest figures the Maryland Department of Natural Resources released Nov. 9.

The count covers the early archery and October muzzleloader seasons, from Sept. 11 through Oct. 31. Calvert’s total was 376 a year ago. Among county white-tailed deer totals in the state’s county-by-county table, only Prince George’s County, up 51.5%, grew faster.

The gains ran across Southern Maryland, and they arrive just before the busiest part of the hunting calendar. The Junior Deer Hunt is set for Nov. 14-15, and the two-week firearms season opens Nov. 28, the period that typically accounts for the largest share of the annual harvest.

How the three counties compare

Charles County recorded the largest early harvest in the region at 772 deer, up 29.7% from 595. St. Mary’s County hunters took 694, a 16.2% increase from 597.

Together the three counties accounted for 1,955 deer, 387 more than at this point in 2025. That is a combined increase of about 25%, roughly eight times the statewide rate, and it means one of every 10 deer taken in Maryland so far this season came from Calvert, Charles or St. Mary’s.

Much of the local growth came from antlered deer. Calvert hunters took 240 bucks, up 39.5% from 172, along with 249 antlerless deer, a 22.1% rise from 204.

The pattern was more pronounced in Charles County, where the antlered harvest climbed 56.5%, from 260 to 407, while the antlerless count rose 9%, to 365. St. Mary’s hunters took 338 antlered deer, up 23.4%, and 356 antlerless deer, up 10.2%.

The statewide picture

Across Maryland, hunters harvested 19,505 deer in the early seasons, 3% more than last year’s 18,930. The total was 5.3% above the previous five-year average of 18,526, the department said.

Archery hunters accounted for 10,671 of those deer, a 7% increase. The October muzzleloader harvest went the other way, falling 6% to 8,451. Another 383 deer were taken through managed hunting programs.

Karina Stonesifer, director of the department’s Wildlife and Heritage Service, said in the announcement that the early seasons are “critical tools for managing the statewide deer population” alongside the firearms season.

Sundays that were open to archery hunting produced 1,174 deer, about 6% of the archery total. The sika deer harvest, concentrated on the lower Eastern Shore, rose 8%, from 1,616 to 1,746.

What the numbers do and do not show

A bigger harvest is not the same as a bigger herd. The department cautioned that the annual count moves from year to year with hunter effort, weather, the supply of natural foods such as acorns, disease outbreaks and the size of the population, and it did not single out a cause for the gains in Southern Maryland.

The agency did offer one explanation for declines elsewhere. Several Eastern Shore counties had moderate outbreaks of hemorrhagic disease this summer and fall, and the resulting local losses of white-tailed deer may have held down harvests there. Talbot County’s total fell 23.9%, Dorchester County’s white-tailed harvest dropped 18.4% and Kent County’s slid 16.8%.

The early numbers also follow a rule change. This fall’s bow season was the first to open under a new state drone rule, which the Chronicle covered when the season began in September.

For Calvert, where deer are a regular source of crop damage complaints and vehicle collisions, the early-season total matters mostly as a signal. The firearms season, which runs Nov. 28 through Dec. 12, will determine whether 2026 ends as a high-harvest year, and the department is expected to report those results after the season closes. Bag limits and season dates are listed in the department’s 2026-2027 Maryland Guide to Hunting and Trapping.